RE: Scarcity and the commodification of talent
A well-written post.
There is, however, a fly in the ointment.
Your premise is predicated upon a "free and fair marketplace." That is, a marketplace where reward freely flows to the content in highest demand (the best quality as determined by the honest cumulative assessment of the audience).
That is NOT the situation we have on Steemit at present. As is self-evident to anyone with eyes, the system is rigged is numerous ways to ensure those with large stakes accumulate the vast majority of the rewards, irrespective of quality.
Quality is of almost no consequence, nor is audience demand. Shakespeare returned from the grave could not make money on Steemit without a substantial stake with which to manipulate market forces.
It requires an IQ of approximately 2 to understand that this will drive away quality content creators and, ultimately, cause the blockchain to collapse. While all of Steemit's systemic problems could be easily solved (I recently wrote a couple articles explaining precisely how to do it), it would require the support of large stakeholders with their large voting power. Alas, these are precisely the people who are benefiting from the currently corrupted system.
Technology changes, people do not.
"Happy Talk" and the "Power of Positivity" will do nothing to change this reality. Competitive blockchains will soon become operational and an exodus of people with a modicum of intelligence will spell the end of the charade.
It's too bad because the underlying idea of Steemit is brilliant. But history is adamant in its insistence that corrupt systems do not survive, they destroy themselves. In all of human history, there has NEVER been a single exception to this rule. Steemit WILL NOT be the first.
Quill
Try to see it as Steem, not Steemit as that is just one facet of the ecosystem and not a very important one the further forward we go. And again, this article was not Steem specific, it is how I see the entire world changing going forward.
People spend much too much time looking at how to improve Steemit without looking at what possibilities are available through SMTs and oracles. Even though the stake could earn on the RCs for user bandwidth, it is possible that the SMT itself is earned in ways that are not stake related at all as they can change requirements as they choose. Through this, the problems of Steem and stake are much less of an issue for new users going into a tokenized platform.
Have you worked out what kind of SMT you could run that would negate the issues of Steem and will it attract users to it? If so, it is worth getting some devs together and creating it as the Steem blockchain still transfers regardless if people post here or not.
But again, this post is about talent as a commodity and in a continually automating world that encourages passivity, those with usable talents are going to be scarce and valuable.